Change of plans: City's new strategy in combating air pollution shifts focus from industry to state regulators

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Monday, May 26, 2008

Over the past four years, Houston Mayor Bill White has launched a variety of initiatives to put pressure on area industrial facilities with unacceptably high emissions of toxics, including the carcinogens benzene and 1,3-butadiene.

The mayor has threatened lawsuits to enforce state air pollution statutes. He's proposed the use of city nuisance ordinances to go after polluters outside the city limits. Last November, White issued a dramatic six-month deadline for industries to make substantive progress in lowering emissions or face city legal action.

So far White's targets have shrugged off the criticism, and pollution levels are largely unchanged. Now the mayor is shifting his sights from industry to the state agency that is supposed to regulate it, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Given the unwavering unwillingness of the TCEQ to inconvenience industrial polluters, that strategy could be no more successful than the threats of litigation.

The city plans to challenge TCEQ permit applications from offending plants in hopes of forcing the agency to formulate realistic standards for limiting emissions. Municipal officials have already filed notice they will contest the permit for one of Lyondell's Houston plants at a hearing open to the public. According to the mayor, "This approach takes into account some concerns that the city of Houston not act unilaterally, and it will be effective in accomplishing our purposes of trying to reduce the amount of benzene in our air."

The decision might also be seen as a white flag by the other side. The Greater Houston Partnership has refused to endorse the mayor's proposals, instead supporting a task force led by industry representatives that recommends longer-term, voluntary measures to reduce emissions. A nonprofit group representing local plant operators recently sued the city to stop enforcement of an air quality ordinance designed to allow city inspectors to enforce state air quality laws. The general counsel for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality actually sent a letter to the trial judge weighing in against the city.

Whether the city's case will get a fair hearing from TCEQ administrators who have already shown a pro-industry bias is open to question. Lyondell's spokesman welcomed the decision to take the city's fight to a TCEQ hearing rather than a courtroom, saying the hearing process was the appropriate place to test the city's theories on the environment.